"Alright. I'm psyched up. I've got blood up to my elbows, veins in my teeth and my helmet and kneepads securely fastened. Let's get out there and make trouble..."
Since I'm pretty sure no one will know where this is from, and I'm also fairly certain almost no one's reading my story, I'll offer what follows: if someone is capable of telling me what that previous text is from, I'll publish the next chapter sooner than I intend to do it. (Seriously. I'll even sacrifice my homework if that happens.)
Enjoy!
VII.
"Okay," Jason whispers after you reach the bottom of the staircase. "Close your eyes."
"Um. Wha-ah, why do you want me to close my eyes?" you manage through a yawn.
"I got a surprise for you, Pipes."
"Ugh. I hate surprises," you grumble. Your eyelids fight to stay closed. "Seriously. I'm not good at guessing and I'm always trying to guess."
"Don't worry, there won't be enough time for you to guess." Jason shoots you one of those smiles that make your cheeks turn red. "Come on. Close them."
You obediently comply.
His arms circle your waist as you feel currents of wind around you. Suddenly, you're floating on thin air. Your eyes close tightly, out of fear this time.
"J-Jason! You may not have noticed this the few times we've flown, but I really prefer being on the ground!"
You feel his chest vibrating when he chuckles at that. "Calm down. We're almost there." And sure enough — right after he says it, your feet land. "Keep them closed. Are they closed?"
"Yes, Jason. My eyes are closed." You roll them under their lids.
The surface beneath your feet feels irregular and it's sloped downwards. Jason lets go of your waist. You hear him shuffling to your right. Gushes of wind make your hair dance around your face. Your loose pajama pants and shirt fly to the beat of the silent night. You guess by the fresh breeze that you're somewhere aboveground.
"It's kind of cold, isn't it?"
"What?" He sounds distracted. "Oh, right." Soon he wraps a blanket around you. "Better? Okay… You can look now."
You fall back on your butt the moment you obey. Because, though you've never been particularly afraid of heights, you'd pay money to see anyone who suddenly found themselves four stories higher than the moment before not feel at least a little vertigo.
"Gods!" you exclaim. "Thanks for giving me another reason to hate surprises."
Jason just chuckles.
In a matter of minutes, though, you calm down enough to reconsider your current location and realize how beautiful it is.
Jason has brought you to the rooftop of the Big House. To your right, beyond where he's sitting, there's a blanket and — bizarrely enough — a basket which you assume is filled with sandwiches and fruits. You hope Jason brought a couple of freezing-cold Cokes also, for you're starting to feel feverish even in the fresh night just out of embarrassment.
In front of you, four stories lower, Camp Half-Blood is spread in all its permanent-summer-camp glory. The creek runs all its length and into the sea, the water glittering in the moonlight. You see the strawberry fields, the stables, the forge, the armory and the endless darkness of the woods to your left. Straight ahead there's the arena and the dinning pavilion beyond the cabins; Hestia's Heart, inside the circle contoured by small buildings, burns so brightly that you can distinguish its color even from this distance. The canoe lake, the volleyball courts and the amphitheater stand at the foot of Thalia's hill, to your right; and even this late at night, there's still some hot-red lava trailing down the climbing wall, shining bright against the dark horizon. Beyond all that, the sea dances its eternal calming dance, the waves reflecting the light so beautifully that you can't even tell where the sea ends and the stars begin.
Because there's stars in the sky tonight. Oh, and what a sky. There's so much stars in it, that you're almost sure it's not natural. Some sort of magic must be at work within the boundaries of camp to make the sky this clear, the stars this close. It's so unreal that you can almost see them moving whenever you blink, raining on you and spreading its light throughout your world.
The place rings a bell in your memory.
You think of when you rode on Festus on your way to Canada. Of Jason's arms around you as you fell back on his chest, asleep. Of flying out of the Grand Canyon having just met him. And you remember watching the night sky as you lay on a rooftop, and kissing him under the shooting stars.
"This place," you say. "It reminds me of…" Then you remember it was all an illusion, a trick of the Mist to manipulate your thoughts. "Forget it. It's nothing."
Jason sits next to you. "Our first kiss?" You stare at him, dumbfounded, beginning to ask how he knows that when he admits, "Leo told me… I think. Or did you?" He shakes his head. "It's funny. Now that a lot of things are coming back, it's getting sort of hard remembering the recent stuff. Our quest and Christmas and New Year… It's all sort of fuzzy."
His face contorts in the suffering expression that you hate.
Trying to bring back his smile, or to at least wipe that painful frown off his face, you pull him towards you and give him a kiss.
You've gotten a lot better in the past couple of weeks — which shouldn't be possible, in fact, since you haven't been spending a lot of time together. But this one kiss is better than better. It's actually great. There's no awkwardness. Your hand lays on his cheek and you're leaning onto him, but he stays immobile. It makes it easier for you, not feeling his touch. If he were to touch your cheek or grab your hand or circle your waist, your heart would start racing and your breath would become ragged.
But he stays still and lets you kiss him. And it all turns out to be the way you've always thought it should be.
When you break apart, Jason is looking quite sleepily at you. "Wow," he sighs.
It's now your turn to chuckle.
You fall on your back, relaxing your body as much as you can on the irregular surface of the roof. "So. Is this like a date?"
Jason blinks before responding. "Yeah. Yeah, I had hoped it would be." He shrugs, placing his elbows on his knees and giving you half his back and half his profile. "It's the best we can do here at Camp. Not a lot of romantic places…"
It crosses your mind how strange it is of Jason to bring you out here in the middle of the night, even when never before have you seen him voluntarily breaking the rules. That's a Roman characteristic, someone had told you. Annabeth, maybe. Though you doubt it was her — you can't imagine forgetting something she's told you. Maybe Malcolm. Or one of Leo's brothers. It doesn't matter who, really, because the thought just passes through and leaves out the back door.
You're still thinking of your first kiss, that first time, as you stared up at the sky in silence. It sometimes is hard to remember that that didn't actually happen. And it's awful, because you think of it almost every time you see Jason. And every time he's ever kissed you, you've thought of it. But it's not real.
The power of ideas, Little Leo whispers to you. And it astonishes you to hear him now, while you're with Jason. He always shows up when you're with Annabeth, or when you think of her. But right now, for some reason, she's giving you some peace and calm so that you can enjoy your time with Jason. She's respectfully hiding in the darkest corner of your mind.
But Little Leo effectively ignites an idea you probably had some time ago. Puts you to think of how one simple idea that repeated itself every chance it got has made you believe you're attracted to Annabeth.
Woah, wait! you think. Made me believe? As in, I'm not attracted to her, I just think I am?
You think of Annabeth, and of how she's doubting her feelings for Percy. How because of one simple idea she's figured that what she feels for him makes no sense. The power of ideas.
Your head's starting to hurt.
But then again, you keep on thinking. How is that idea of hers different than the one I had about Jason and I being meant for each other just because of the memories Hera implanted in our — my head?
"Hey, Jason?" you whisper hesitantly after a long beat.
"Mm?"
"Why do you like me?"
"What?" When he looks at you, you see he's clearly confused. As if he couldn't think of a reason why he wouldn't like you. You smile at that. "What do you mean why? You're great, Piper. How could I not like you?"
"I mean…" you falter. You've kept most of your doubts to yourself, but there's a feeling in your gut telling you you should voice them now. He's your boyfriend. You trusted him with your life when you were on your quest, how could you not trust him with helping you overcome these troubled ideas? "Are we a couple because we like each other, or only because Hera made us believe we did? Or made me believe, in any case…"
The look he gives you is full of uncertainty. Could she be the one that doesn't like me? he seems to be thinking.
"Um…" You wince at his bemused expression. "Can we pretend I didn't say anything?"
He blinks a couple of times and looks away before responding. "Don't worry, Pipes. It's not like I haven't asked myself that."
The air stills. And it's as if it's run out — out of your lungs, out of the sky.
"But the more I think about it, the better it feels. I like you because you're so nice to Leo, for example. So accepting of his… you know," he nods your way suggestively. "I like that you're always so ready to accept how others are, and how you're always trying to help them. Look at you and Annabeth, I mean…" You blush slightly when he mentions her. If you only knew, you think. "She's so sad and you've been so supporting. That's another thing, too. You're just so fun. Ask her why she likes your company and she'll tell you as much. Seriously, Pipes, why would I not like you?"
He gazes at you again and he's looking so sure of himself, so convinced that what he said was all true; so confident and handsome that you can't suppress the urge to take his face in your hands and kiss him once more.
You're so grateful for his beautiful words, and for his eyes that are, oh, so in love with you. But you're more grateful because you believe what he's told you. You believe that you're now a couple not only because you two felt compelled to it, but because he felt compelled to you. Just as you feel compelled to him.
You've been so focused in your own Annabeth-related problems ad in how much in love you are with Jason, that you've failed to notice just how hard he's fallen for you. So hard, indeed, that it's been clear as daylight in his eyes all tonight and the last week, and that is loud as the machinery inside Bunker 9 in the way his kiss is soft and his breathing heavy.
And as you feel one of his arms around your waist as the other circles your shoulders; and as you fiddle with the hem of his shirt, not knowing where else to put your hand, but still feeling that's the right place for it to be, while with your other hand you trace the curve of his cheek even though its shape is already well stored in your memory; and as your eyes close of their own free will to show a starry sky even inside the dark surface of your eyelids, you know that Jason is not at all like Annabeth.
You know that your relationship with Jason isn't merely based in a memory that never actually occurred. It's not based in an idea. It's based in a feeling.
A feeling that, right at this moment, feels like the most intense thing you've ever felt.
Useless fact of the week — It's not a fact, really. More like a recommendation. Read Watchmen. Yes, the graphic novel. Seriously. It's so good you won't believe it. In fact, if you've ever seen the movie, find a wand and obliviate yourselves; if you haven't seen it, wait until you read the graphic novel to see it.
Actual useless fact of the week — the writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore, was also the writer for V for Vendetta, and for a certain thing called The Killing Joke, which is a fantastic 64-page comic. Written in 1988, it tells the most popular (and in my opinion the best) version of how the Joker was born. You guessed it right — it is a Batman comic. Lucky for everybody, Moore is so good, that you don't need to know a lot about either Batman or the Joker to like this particular number.
Believe it — Alan Moore is probably the best graphic novel writer of all time. Followed closely by Frank Miller and maybe Neil Gaiman. Get into them and you won't want to leave.
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